Get more stuff like thisin your inbox

Are you addicted to ‘full-up-ness’?

In our society overload is a big problem and we spend many of our days feeling what I call full–up-ness. Full-up-ness is my word for feeling overwhelmed with the day to day business of our lives.

After last weekend’s retreat I created internal space and I came away feeling less ‘full up.’ A week later the outside world invaded my new found space despite my efforts to keep it at bay.

It is obvious that in order to bring space into our lives we must find ways to cope with our exposure to the endless pounding of other people’s demands and the sheer quantity of information that finds its way in the door. When we are suffering from full-up-ness, we cannot perceive or think clearly and our health and happiness suffer. We find ourselves sleep walking through our lives without a corner of our life to call our own.

My answer has often been to create for myself a kind of tunnel-vision that blocks out extraneous things. Indeed, I often call this ‘getting into my tunnel.’ Unfortunately, this becomes problematic because in my tunnel I stop paying attention, become closed and unreceptive to what is happening around me. So If locking ourselves away isn’t the answer, how do we manage our full–up-ness?

It is becoming apparent that only when we build on a solid foundation of healthy habits can we manage our day to day full – up – ness with grace and wisdom. We really do need to ensure we get enough sleep, take time for recreation and vacation, and find a way of stepping back from our everyday concerns.

In addition to these external strategies there is a job to do on the inside too. For many there is an internal resistance to adopting strategies that will help because we are oddly addicted to our full-up-ness. In some way our full-up-ness tells us we are valuable and needed, and feeling valued and needed are hard things to give up. Only when we do the internal work of giving up our addiction to are we likely to find a healthy rhythm that enables us to find more space in the business of our lives.